Why Am I Blogging?

Hi, everyone:)

I have only a week in Japan and then will go back to Chico to start a new semester as a junior student there. About three and half month of the first summer vacation felt a very long time at the beginning, but when I realized, it is about to end. What have I done during this break? Did I accomplish anything very meaningful to me for the next semester? I am constantly asking these questions in my mind. I think that I can feel my growth of this summer a few month later because it’s intangible; it’s always hard to actually feel.

In the last post, I wrote, “a purpose is always needed” as the title. By putting my then thoughts into words, I started getting out of my laziness.

It really gave me an opportunity to remember the reasons why I created this blog and come up with a new idea about expanding the potential of this blog.

However, before talking about the new idea, I would like you to know why I am blogging and the benefits of blogging in this post.

It’s been a year and half since I began this blog with WordPress. Initially, I was in a small class offered by a very kind and knowledgeable professor, Mikhail, at Lakeland College Japan. In that class, he explained to his students how to write a resume in English, encouraged us to have a talk on some of the interesting businesses or websites, and introduced LinkedIn, one of the biggest social media focused heavily on creating professional networks. And there was making a blog. Of those activities, blogging was the most attractive to me. Why? I didn’t really think of why, but now I have gradually realized the benefits.

Nick Scheidies, who used to work as a writer at Income Diary and is currently a project manager at Next Level Ink, wrote a great post on the benefits of blogging, and he mentioned the 20 biggest benefits of blogging in that post.

So by using his article, I would like to summarize my personal top 5 benefits of having a blog.

1.Getting A Better Job

This notion is quite amazing. According to the data used in Nick’s post, 9 out of 10 companies actually do some online research on new employees’ social media, whether they have a blog or a LinkedIn account. I believe companies would do this secretly so that new candidates cannot know about it. Thus, potentially having a blog can be an advantage for getting a good job. However, the chances will lower if you write a very random stuff without any in-depth thoughts.

2. Becoming A Good Writer and A Published Author

Just two years ago, I wasn’t even able to write a single page long paper. I mean I could, but it was extremely difficult for me to get it done. It took me forever. However, now I have become a relatively a good writer in both English and Japanese. I keep writing this blog in English because to me, English writing looks much logical than Japanese most of the time, and its structure is very simple. Therefore, it helps me to organize my vague thoughts, which at the same time improve my writing in Japanese. Constantly writing a blog has lots of benefits that were mentioned above.

In addition, a good thing about blogging is that I can get an instant feedback. If I had to submit my post to a publisher to get a feedback, it would cost a lot and take a long time. However, thanks to the development of the Internet, everyone can be a great author for almost free! This is an amazing thing. If you can get a good amount of people visiting your website, you will be able to make some money.

3. Becoming An Expert in A Field That You Like

Everyone can start a blog, but not all one of them have a specific interest to share, which tends to attract more people. So I believe it is totally ok to start your blog with something random. I pretty much began my blog that way. I have been writing and sharing what I have randomly experienced from my studying abroad. Sometimes my post is about design, but in other posts, I talk about job hunting, my academic, and other stuff that I feel like I wanna share. However, I think that I have gradually got closer to what I truly wanna do. You will figure out something that you are really interested in. So don’t worry about it right now. Just do it.

As you find something interests you, you will be constantly learning new information about the subject and feeling more motivated to write about your blog. That is when you actually start seeing this benefits of blogging.

4. Building A Network

As long as you publish your post to the Internet, where tons of people can have an access, there are always readers of your blog. The number varies depending on how great your writing will be, how often you will update, and how specific your blog is. I made a post on how to use social media to promote your website. Link is here. There’s another link in that post, which explains more about promoting a website via social media.

More trafics you will get, more people will comment on your great posts. Some of them might directly contact you in order to talk with you. Although you should know the risk of getting to know unknown people online, it is usually good people trying to contact you. They might wanna ask you for a help or simply wanna help you out.

It is also very important and effective for you to reader other people’s blog. They can possibly give you an insight for your next blog post and expand your network as well.

5. Gain Influence 

This is kind of similar to the number 4, but you can influence others, express yourself, make others understood yourself. It’s fun to see people follow your suggestions that you might put on your blog, and hear them say, “your blog really helped me!”

Politicians, TV and movie stars, great athletes and musicians can influence people. You think it’s impossible for you, don’t you? Well, you can actually.

So here we go. I have discussed some of the benefits of blogging. You can learn more benefits on Nick Scheidies’s post. Link is here as well.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. By midnight, I will try to create a new blog that I am going to translate the original post here and repost on.